Poems of Narad

The Choral Odes of AUM

This is the glory of the waking Spring
When from a seeming death that is but sleep
The year returns in fruitful blossoming
With beauty that makes the envious Heaven's weep.

Flowers burst through the still half-frozen crust
With a force beyond proportion to their size
In an exuberant and joyous thrust
To see yet one more burning dawn arise.

But now comes winter and the frost appears
In sparkling fairy landscapes edged with rime,
The rose whose petals droop with dewy tears
In a deathless moment of eternal time.

My labourdone, the garden surely blessed
All struggles and successes memories
Recurring in my dreams while earth at rest
Prepares the sap to flow in leafless trees.

I leave this place of beauty quietly
Returning to my soul's ancestral home
In India whose refuge by the sea
Awaits me with the choral odes of AUM.

Will I again awake and draw new breath,
Sign my name in the scripture-book of love
And leave behind the bitterness of death,
My worthiness of all Their blessings prove.